The term Bare Metal refers to a system without a base operating system (OS) or installed applications aka Bare Machine, is a computer/server that can be programmed to execute instructions directly on its hardware. This was common for computers in the 1960s and 1970s, such as PDP and VAX systems. Today, Bare Metal computers are usually found in embedded systems, where a small, dedicated piece of computer hardware runs inside of a larger machine. In organizations, it is also used for short-term, processing needs where data can be stored, processed, or analyzed on a server for as long as is necessary, and then the server can be wound back down when it’s no longer needed. This way, resources aren’t wasted, and there’s no need to continue running the server for longer than necessary.

Bare Metal systems are ‘physical’ servers, not virtual, and they are also ‘single-tenant,’ they can not be shared among clients. Every server can run a number of tasks for the client or can have several real-time customers, however, they are totally dedicated to the purchaser who's leasing them. Unlike many servers in a data center, they are not being shared between multiple customers. This serves isolation with performance predictability, the Bare Metal server features the most stable environment, making it perfect for processing large volumes of data. Other significant benefits include direct access to the server and the ability to leverage all underlying hardware architectures.